Introduction

In this course, I propose a computational analysis of my personal playlist on Spotify. My pocket playlist comprises disco, dance-pop, and sentimental ballads, which I have been accumulating since November 2020. The collection of these songs is solely influenced by my YouTube explore and radio shows. The size of my corpus is around 90 songs in the playlist from various genres, such as Korean, English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Taiwanese, and Japanese. The diversity of my favourites is inspirational to my project and I hope to understand the mechanism behind my choice. Most of the songs are the title of their album, in other words, the default song that producers design. My playlist possesses a few repetitions of several artists, like The Weeknd, Kylie Minogue, Wayne Huang, and Caizi; others are mainly independent, only 1 to 3 songs of each appear on my playlist. The dominating music genres are disco-pop and dance-pop, with variations among different languages. Each song stands out but connects each with the combination of its genre and languages, and this project aims to evaluate its similarities and patterns.

Typical tracks:

TWICE “I CAN’T STOP ME” It is an inclusive track with a common genre of retro and dance-pop, and Korean Pop. The catchy melodies and modern pop conclude the typical genre of my playlist.

KYLIE MINOGUE, DUA LIPA “REAL GROOVE” The elements of its funk bass and disco-pop frequently appear on my playlist as an English pop.

Kay Tse “囍帖街 (The Wedding Invitations Streets)” It represents another genre of the sentimental ballad, with a slow tempo and storytelling tones.

Atypical tracks:

Official HIGE DANdism “I Love…” It is one of the few Japanese songs in my playlist, and its genre belongs to its rock music.

Olivia Ong “Fly Me to the moon” It is the only ballad song in English on my playlist.

Mirror “Ignited” It is an exclusive electronic and dance-pop music in Cantonese.

Analysis

Discussion